The efforts to network evermore electronic devices to one another domestically or at home have already now progressed to a very major extent. A range of different standards for the networking of devices have now been worked out, some of which have different objectives. One of the systems envisages devices being networked on the basis of the so-called Internal Protocol IP. A first version of a Standard is already available for this system. This system has become known by the abbreviation UPnP, which stands for Universal Plug and Play. The corresponding standard is currently available, in Version 1.0. Further information related to the UPnP System and the associated Standard can be found on the official Internet site for the UPnP consortium at www.upnp.org. In the UPnP System, there are no restrictions on the device types. It is thus intended to be possible to network not only devices from the consumer electronics field such as TVs, DVD players, set-top boxes, video recorders, camcorders etc., but also domestic devices, such as washing machines, refrigerators, heating controllers, automatic coffee machines, and so on. Personal computers may form a specific category of devices, although these are also taken into account in the UPnP System and can also be integrated in the network.
However, the various layers of the OSI/ISO reference model for data communication are not specified in the UPnP system. This relates in particular to the bit transmission layer and the data link layer. The UPnP System therefore no longer contains any specification related to the transmission medium via which the data to be interchanged must be transmitted. Widely differing transmission standards are permissible here. These include, for example, the Ethernet Protocol, IEEE 1394 Protocol, wire-free transmission itself in accordance with IEEE 802.11x, Bluetooth or HIPERLAN/2.